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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Russia
Spain
Germany
Iran
Colombia
Argentina
South Africa
Peru
Poland
Indonesia
Turkey
Ukraine
Belgium
Canada
Romania
Chile
Czechia
Ecuador
Portugal
Netherlands
Hungary
Iraq
Sweden
Pakistan
Philippines
Bolivia
Egypt
Switzerland
Bulgaria
Morocco
Bangladesh
Austria
Tunisia
Japan
Saudi Arabia
Greece
Guatemala
Panama
Slovakia
Israel
Croatia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
China
Jordan
Serbia
Honduras
Lebanon
Ireland
Slovenia
Moldova
Georgia
Burma
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
Armenia
Lithuania
North Macedonia
Algeria
Dominican Republic
Paraguay
Costa Rica
Afghanistan
Denmark
Ethiopia
Nepal
Libya
West Bank and Gaza
Sudan
Belarus
Kenya
El Salvador
Nigeria
Oman
Kosovo
Albania
Kyrgyzstan
South Korea
Latvia
Zimbabwe
Venezuela
Kuwait
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Malaysia
Australia
Zambia
Malawi
Montenegro
Senegal
Finland
Congo (Kinshasa)
Uzbekistan
Eswatini
Luxembourg
Norway
Uruguay
Angola
Mozambique
Ghana
Estonia
Cameroon
Mauritania
Bahrain
Namibia
Sri Lanka
Jamaica
Uganda
Belize
Malta
Madagascar
Qatar
Cuba
Haiti
Rwanda
Cyprus
Hong Kong
Botswana
Cote d'Ivoire
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Andorra

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Russia
Spain
Germany
Iran
Colombia
Argentina
South Africa
Peru
Poland
Indonesia
Turkey
Ukraine
Belgium
Canada
Romania
Chile
Czechia
Ecuador
Portugal
Netherlands
Hungary
Iraq
Sweden
Pakistan
Philippines
Bolivia
Egypt
Switzerland
Bulgaria
Morocco
Bangladesh
Austria
Tunisia
Japan
Saudi Arabia
Greece
Guatemala
Panama
Slovakia
Israel
Croatia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
China
Jordan
Serbia
Honduras
Lebanon
Ireland
Slovenia
Moldova
Georgia
Burma
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
Armenia
Lithuania
North Macedonia
Algeria
Dominican Republic
Paraguay
Costa Rica
Afghanistan
Denmark
Ethiopia
Nepal
Libya
West Bank and Gaza
Sudan
Belarus
Kenya
El Salvador
Nigeria
Oman
Kosovo
Albania
Kyrgyzstan
South Korea
Latvia
Zimbabwe
Venezuela
Kuwait
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Malaysia
Australia
Zambia
Malawi
Montenegro
Senegal
Finland
Congo (Kinshasa)
Uzbekistan
Eswatini
Luxembourg
Norway
Uruguay
Angola
Mozambique
Ghana
Estonia
Cameroon
Mauritania
Bahrain
Namibia
Sri Lanka
Jamaica
Uganda
Belize
Malta
Madagascar
Qatar
Cuba
Haiti
Rwanda
Cyprus
Hong Kong
Botswana
Cote d'Ivoire
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Andorra